Bonkers Blog March 2013

There are so many Bexley issues with the Information Commissioner (ICO), the Local
Government Ombudsman and with the council itself that you might think there
would be no shortage of blogging material but I would prefer to wait for each
case to conclude rather than report them piecemeal. The latter might make little
sense to occasional readers and those with better things to do than remember
everything written here. However I’ll make an exception for one item which surely
cannot be too far from a conclusion.

On
31st May 2012 the Bexley Council Monitoring Group (BCMG) requested a copy of chief
executive Will Tuckley’s business diary for that month under the Freedom of Information Act.
You would think that’d be an easy one to fulfill, just send a copy with his
daughter’s birthday party and his wedding anniversary blanked out and job done.

Nothing is that easy in Bexley; no answer was forthcoming.

Separately another request was sent for the June diary and confusingly this did find
an answer in October 2012. Better late than never.

A complaint about the first request went to the ICO and
nothing happened for three months but when a copy of the diary eventually turned up it was
just as uninteresting as the June diary. I didn’t even bother to report it here, it was just a typed
list of what Bexley council claimed was in Tuckley’s original diary. The complaint went back to the
ICO as it wasn’t a proper, photostat or whatever, copy. They eventually got around to pressing Bexley
council to do the obvious and send a recognisable copy with anything personal blocked out.

Bexley council concluded the second circuit of the loop in the same old way. Another typed list of appointments,
meetings and conferences has been prepared. But it’s not the same as before. There are 22
significant differences which does tend to confirm that they just make these
things up as they go along. The BCMG has gone back to the ICO to give them the evidence that Bexley council doesn’t tell the truth when it responds to FOIs.